When people speak about spirituality they are generally speaking about connection. Whether they are speaking about connection to their idea of god, other people, the universal mind, world consciousness etc.

They ( the one seeking) are the vehicle for the connection. A "you" can't have a connection with another without a "you". The technology or methodology is different but achieves the same whether it's religion, meditation, biofeedback, yoga, martial arts etc. The "you" are seen in context, as part of the whole.

Aikido is a very direct methodology in attempting to achieve connection to another person. It is instant feed back whether it be gratifying or otherwise. You know how you are doing immediately.

You also have to be connected to yourself (body awareness, mental state, intention etc) in order to achieve a solid connection with another.

Spirituality is a loaded way of saying getting connected.

I think that you are onto something here, with the idea of connection. Humans are social animals, born, bred, and evolved to need relationship to other people. We are hardwired with a set of emotions and thought patterns which help us survive, manipulate our environment, and even feel good. We are trained immediately and deeply by other people to perform certain behaviors that reinforce interpersonal connections, our personal control over them, and our control over the environment we are in. We want more connection, more relationship, more control, so we extend the need beyond its function into metaphor land.

And that's where I think we get into trouble, start making up stories, and, eventually, lose our ability to functionally act to further the connection or affect our world. For some, the way in which the connection is made becomes more important than the connection. The method, flawed as it is, becomes more important than the result. Dogma. For some, they look to create things that have some sort of uberconnection and ubercontrol, and then try to connect to those things. Religion. The overriding message becomes "I do something in order to feel something, and so should you."

The discussion for me eventually distills into two questions, one sentence. "Why is the sky blue?" On one hand, one is asking a procedural question of "how", or "by what process". The other hand is holding a bunch of what I think is presupposition, and wants to know "why", or "to what purpose". I think only one of those questions is answerable and worth answering.